Monday, June 13, 2011

NYPD arrests woman for sitting at Tompkins Square Park chess tables — and not playing chess


See that sign near the Tompkins Square Park chess tables? Probably not, given that it's about 15 feet in the air. (And it's one of two signs around the tables.)


Anyway, better pay attention to it. Bob Arihood has the story of Lisa, who spent about 32 hours in the system after sitting at a chess table for 10 minutes the other morning.

Read his post at Neither More Nor Less here.

5 comments:

Karen Lillis said...

This sounds like CLASSIC broken window theory b.s. Arrest the citizens for the most basic violations of the because-we-said-so rules, and discover while you've got them in jail that they have an OUTSTANDING WARRANT for another useless charge. Giuliani would be so proud.

john penley said...

We live in a POLICE STATE. 1933 the party is over and all of us who are not rich or ruling class children going to NYU might as well get ready for the ORANGE JUMP SUITS with numbers on them. For a long time many of us rebellious MFers have been yelling NO POLICE STATE and others laughed or Yuppies and CHRISTADORA real estate developers told us to go F ourselves while using the heavy handed police thugs to get richer and turn TSP into a gentrified playground for white rich "good Germans". Well it is here so salute the WAR flag of the USA Corporate real estate developer drone overlords and their National Security Homeland Prison Camp or fight back. Time is running out slaves.

Anonymous said...

Karen, that's absurd. Whatever you thought of Rudy, he was mayor twelve years ago and this has nothing to do with "broken windows." It's Bloomberg who -- after blowing off the term limit law and declaring himself above it, as they accused Rudy of wanting to do but he did not -- passes these million little laws and enforces them to the extreme.

Blame HIM, or blame the governor or the president. That's what people do when it's a politician they don't like: The blame for this crap rises like a balloon to the highest politician of the party they oppose.

This is the first case, though, when I've heard someone blame a guy out of office for 12 years. I don't care to talk about Dinkins or any other crappy mayor now. Let's talk about THIS and who's enforcing the letter but not the spirit of these laws.

Jill said...

I saw something today (on twitter? Gothamist?) that said she was arrested for an outstanding warrant, not for sitting at the tables.

Tom said...

@Jill: Bob Arihood's updated post on the incident refutes this "official" story completely:

http://neithermorenorless.blogspot.com/